


Saudade

by AdvisedPanic



Category: Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Role Reversal, M/M, Slight Reversal AU, They still fall in love, Vignettes, Yuuri is a danseur
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-01-04
Updated: 2017-01-04
Packaged: 2018-09-14 19:37:48
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,641
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9199598
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AdvisedPanic/pseuds/AdvisedPanic
Summary: Here’s a tragic sentence:Victor Nikiforov tore his ACL in his right knee during the 2015 Grand Prix Series in the middle of his free skate.Here’s what’s actually tragic about it:He did nothing wrong.*After an injury at the GPS that prevents his 5th consecutive win, Victor vows to return to skating to reclaim his title. Katsuki Yuuri is a ballet danseur who suffered a similar injury years before and made a successful comeback. Yuuri choreographs and coaches Victor through his toughest competitive season yet, but as it will always be, they fall in love along the way.





	

Here’s a tragic sentence:

Victor Nikiforov tore his ACL in his right knee during the 2015 Grand Prix Series in the middle of his free skate.

Here’s what’s actually tragic about it:

He did nothing wrong.

*

If Victor had won the gold medal at the Grand Prix in 2015, he may have allowed himself to retire. He’s been completely uninspired for the entire season and another gold medal would have been the last knot on his noose; if he had won, he knew he could have swallowed his pride to step away from his career (life).

Maybe he would have coached. Maybe he would have abandoned skating altogether just to learn how to live again.

But he didn’t win the gold medal at the Grand Prix in 2015. He didn’t even medal. He fell during his signature quad flip and tore his ligament and cracked his head against the ice so hard he doesn’t remember skating the routine at all.

So Victor can’t retire. He doesn’t care if he _would_ have won. He doesn’t even care if he never learns what love or life actually is. He fell and lost so spectacularly there were few who thought he could ever skate again.

He has to return to the ice, and he has to win. He has to prove to everyone who says he’ll never return that he can rise from this humiliation of his failing body to the throne once more.

Victor forcibly forgets how lonely he was, up on that high, glittering perch. He’ll reach that peak even if he dies getting there.

*

Like in many worlds, Katsuki Yuuri floods into his life through a video.

In this one, Victor is researching rehabilitation ballet exercises and watches Katsuki Yuuri, over a long series of videos, rise from a hauntingly similar injury to Victor’s to become the first runner-up in the highest ballet competition in the world.

The charming ballet dancer smiles in an interview after his near-win, and it’s such a pure thing that Victor’s breath catches in his throat. How could someone be so…so…so happy after a second-place finish? How is it enough for him?

There aren’t enough words for Victor to string together to explain what he feels when he looks at Katsuki Yuuri. What he does know, and can articulate, is that he wants to do what Yuuri did. Victor has no idea how Yuuri got from point A to B, from failure to near-perfection; Victor can’t fathom the journey at all.

So Victor does the only thing that makes sense to him:

He books a flight to Japan.

*

Yuuri is very, very pretty. Victor knew he was pretty before he got here, of course, but seeing it in person was something different altogether. The persona of the sweet, bashful, young-light man he portrayed on the stage in all his videos was no different from the man that sweetly recoiled when Victor flirted with him on reflex.

Like a magpie, Victor is drawn to pretty things. But, also like a magpie, he is not kept by these pretty things. He flits between the pretty sparkles in his vision and never stays in one place, too tempted by the allure of something better.

And yet. Time rolls by and Hasetsu has started to feel like a second home. He knows its steps and its streets and its sights, knows which of its shops were Yuuri’s favorites, which of its festivals made Yuuri’s eyes shine. Victor knows how its ocean is lonesome but not when Yuuri is there.

His simmering desperation for his crown keeps him on the ice. His magpie longing for Yuuri’s smiles keeps him in Hasetsu.

*

Yuuri, Victor comes to learn, is a talented choreographer.

However, Yuuri is not so talented at displaying his choreography in competitions. He never once danced his own work, always relied on that of his mentor, Minako-sensei. Minako is talented and knows Yuuri very well—their partnership is probably how Yuuri had been able to come in second.

Victor finds the idea the world has never seen Yuuri’s work a tragedy.

When he is finally cleared to skate—delicately, no jumps, just for strength—Victor begs and pleads with Yuuri for hours to convince him to choreograph for Victor.

Surprisingly, Yuuri finally gives in.

“I have a couple of ideas,” Yuuri concedes. “I’ll have something for you in a week or two. For now, let’s just focus on getting you back into skating form?”

It’s almost like Yuuri’s his coach. Victor beams and hugs Yuuri for good measure, glowing when he sees the red blush spreading over his skin.

*

Victor has never spent so much time in a ballet studio. Of course he was trained—ballet is incredible for flexibility and strength in skating—but he never had any particular attachment or investment in the art.

Yuuri is another story. He comes to life here: he bounds and spins and rises en pointe with ease, ethereal and brilliant, moving as though he’s weightless and unbound. Gravity loosens its grip when Yuuri dances, and sometimes Victor, a mere witness, can feel it.

Smiling comes so easy to Yuuri, even when he’s sweating and breathing heavy, chest rising and falling beneath a tight black shirt, exhausted from adjusting the choreography and technical compositions. Victor grips his knees so tight his fingernails ache, desperate to touch but unwilling to break Yuuri from this charm that makes him beam and shine and earn back his confidence.

Yuuri approaches him, eyes alight, hair pushed back. He holds out a hand to Victor, offering, undemanding.

Victor takes a deep, shuddering breath; he reaches out to take Yuuri’s hand, a cavernous distance closing, open water finally lapping at the shore.

*

Yuuri is an evil genius, and Victor has not decided whether or not unleashing him was a good thing.

Yuuri is a genius because he sees Victor and choreographs him a short program that sets Victor’s heart on fire. It’s elated and joyous and bound intrinsically to triumph. But it’s also lonely, with reaching, grasping fingers towards invisible hands. It’s brimming with every emotion Victor has known in his career.

Yuuri is evil because he sees Victor and choreographs him a short program that is filled with the emotions Victor never allowed anyone to see. It’s desperate and the elation of every movement is a mask for hallowed sadness. Victor has absolutely no idea how to convey the music Yuuri creates in every breath with Victor’s own measly, traitorous body.

Yuuri is a genius because he is actively encouraging and kind, a welcome relief to the unrelenting sandpaper dedication Victor has always approached skating with. Victor is angry and desperate and so terribly lonely; Yuuri knows this and seeks to show Victor compassion at every turn.

Yuuri is evil because he is merciless and unexhaustive, an immovable mountain in the face of the petty storm of Victor’s fatigue and complaining. He stands his ground in training and pushes Victor past limits he didn’t know he had.

Yuuri is a genius because he does not include a quad flip anywhere in the short program.

Yuuri is evil because he does not include a quad flip anywhere in the short program.

*

His knee always hurts—a constant reminder.

Yuuri doesn’t push, but he always slows his pace when they walk to the ocean.

_He sees me for who I am._

*

Yuuri is so, so kind. He is bashful and has fluctuating self-esteem. Some days, he surpasses Victor’s dedication; others, he can barely move. He is beautiful and talented and Victor had never wanted to hear someone’s laugh so badly.

Victor has truly wanted for very few things in his life. Gold medals came with unassuming ease; fame followed suit; his name immortalized was like an afterimage. He always had the ice, never wished for friends, never ached for more than inspiration and a pair of skates.

But here, with Yuuri, with a bad knee and a shattered heart, Victor _wants._

*

Yuuri laughs, a blush painted across his cheeks. “You know,” he says, “If Minako-sensei hadn’t insisted I keep up with ballet, I probably would have become an ice skater.”

Victor’s brain stops short, the emergency brake grinding on his back-burner thoughts to fully comprehend what Yuuri’s saying to him. This stop-process-realization procedure is how Victor generally thinks around Yuuri, now. He realizes he hasn’t said anything in response, and desperately reaches for something to urge Yuuri to explain rather than clam up.

“Oh?” is what he finally settles on.

“Yeah,” Yuuri says, packing up his bag. They’re in Minako’s studio, still training and practicing for jumps and movements on safer ground; tonight, they’d stayed later than usual, and Minako had left Yuuri to lock up. “I used to watch you when I was younger. I wanted to move like you.”

Yuuri seems to pause, glancing over at Victor thoughtfully, eyes soft behind his glasses. After a beat, then two, Yuuri continues, “My first time at Worlds, I couldn’t sleep, so I fell and partially tore my ACL. I was 20, and lesser injuries had retired younger dancers before, so I figured I was done for. But I saw one of your free skates and—Victor, I couldn’t get it out of my head. I actually went back to dancing to reinterpret your routine for ballet.”

Yuuri laughs, bashfully, rubbing a hand through his hair. “It’s what got me interested in choreography, too. You basically brought me back to my passion. Is what I’m trying to say.”

Victor can barely think through the fog this story descended on his thoughts, like trying to lurch through dark water; Yuuri’s smile and kind eyes illuminate the way, thumping his heart into a new rhythm as though it had been following the wrong beat all along. “I always…knew I had fans that found inspiration like that,” Victor finally says, more subdued than before. He fiddles with his knee brace as he continues, “But I suppose I…never thought about it like that. That you…”

Yuuri closes some of the distance between them, but didn’t touch Victor’s outstretched leg. “There’s more stories that include you than just mine,” he says. He’s smiling still, almost as though he’s not thinking about it. “Even though I didn’t follow you into skating, I’m just glad that I can help you now.”

He pauses, somehow smiles softer. Victor can’t take his eyes off him. “Maybe we were always meant to find each other, no matter the paths we take.”

*

Yuuri, emboldened by Victor’s simultaneous wariness and adoration of his short program, began working on Victor’s free skate.

“I’m no good with music,” Yuuri tells him, one evening, over the smooth hustling of the night train, “Can you find something I can put it to?”

“Of course, Yuuri,” Victor says. He has always wanted for inspiration, never quite there, but looking at Yuuri in that moment—silhouetted by yellow light, empty train seats to either side, smiling and hair mussed from cold wind, ears red-tipped, the softest glow on his skin and in the rumples of his coat—Victor had never been more aware of how little he understood about anything worthwhile.

Victor’s knee aches, but now, he has something else to focus on. Specifically: the way Yuuri smiles, a soft, pleased stretch of his lips, the crinkling of his eyes, the way his fingers fold together in his lap.

*

Yuuri scraps his first idea for Victor’s free skate.

“But Yuuri!” Victor cries, because he has seen the bits and pieces Yuuri practiced when he thought Victor wasn’t looking and could not believe Yuuri would toss something so beautiful away. It was like the short program—focused on triumph and victory, with that world-ending release of emotions when an artist realizes they’ve created the masterpiece of their career.

“No, no,” Yuuri says, shaking his head. “It wasn’t right. Trust me, it wasn’t—I’ll think of something. Maybe I’ll call that composer I know…something’s not right about the music, I think…”

“But it was beautiful,” Victor says.

Yuuri shrugs. “It wasn’t right,” he repeats. For reasons Victor can’t understand, this does not comfort him.

*

Victor is thrown from sleep as Yuuri bounds up onto his bed in the middle of the night. He jerks upright, rubbing at his eyes as Yuuri sticks two earphones into his ears. There’s silence, and then triumphant strings ring out, almost out of place—like it was the climax of a song, rather than its beginning. Victor jolts awake at its volume and heat, furrowing his brow; the strings rise higher and higher and suddenly, like a ligament snapping, cut to silence.

The music returns, melancholy and morose, lonely draws on sorrowful strings in a miserable melody; Victor’s eyes almost fill with tears as the violin whimpers on. He looks up to Yuuri, whose eyes are gleaming above an upturned mouth.

“Yes?” Yuuri asks.                             

Piano joins the strings, urging them upwards towards the joy of the initial culmination. The repetitive violin’s melody transforms, through the piano’s support, soaring towards that initial peak of the music, but with a lingering morose arpeggio. The scars of loneliness like Victor’s never fade.

Victor nods, expression torn between awe and aching familiar sadness. He knows this music, somewhere deep.

*

Victor’s knee still hurts, every day, but on one of those days he lands his first quad in practice after months of intensive rehabilitation and training, and Yuuri cries.

“Why are you crying?” Victor asks, somewhat frenzied at the sight of Yuuri’s tears. He knows they’re not sad tears, but the wet lines down his red cheeks are enough to tighten Victor’s heart. “Yuuri? I’ve landed hundreds of quads, Yuuri?”

“I know,” Yuuri says, wiping his eyes and grinning like a fool. “I know you have. But you just did it again.”

Victor finds himself mimicking Yuuri’s stupid-wide grin and he doesn’t know why. Pride, pride like he hasn’t felt in years, clogs his throat and loosens his fingers enough to reach out for Yuuri. They embrace over the rink wall and Victor digs his fingers into Yuuri’s coat, and he never wants to let go.

*

Yuuri says, “I’ve finished your free skate routine, Victor.”

Victor watches Yuuri perform it for him in Minako’s studio, creating the music with his body, and Victor has not felt so small and so inspired since he first watched the men’s single free skating championship when he was five and a half years old on a rickety television in his living room.

Yuuri doesn’t break his spell to explain what jumps will replace his, ballet to skating; he doesn’t stop at all, running the entire routine through before Victor’s wide, captivated eyes.

He’s never been more terrified, and yet, he knows with clear-cut certainty that this is the routine he was born to perform.

*

He has to compete in a local Russian competition to qualify for any of the Grand Prix competitions, since his injury and subsequent surgery prevented him from competing in Nationals and the European Championships. Victor tells him his travel plans, and Yuuri says, “I’ll have to check my passport. I haven’t left Japan since the Worlds, what, two years ago now?”

Victor blinks—the world subtly shifts around him, brightening—and he asks, “You’re coming?”

“Of course, Victor,” Yuuri says, so kindly it hurts. To soften the blow of his compassion, he continues, “I’m practically your coach. Aren’t skaters very reliant on their coaches?”

Victor says yes because he has no idea what else to say. His head’s still buzzing with the realization Yuuri’s in just as deep as Victor is, now.

*

Victor is 27 years old, practically a legend, and he’s competing against _children._

He feels embarrassed even sitting near them. He hasn’t had to compete in local events in years, let alone when he started winning every gold available to him. Now, he wears a knee brace on airplanes and in their hotel room and has to actively not lose to a bunch of generally inconsistent, mildly talented kids.

Yuuri _oohs_ over their shiny costumes, but says to Victor, “Yours are much prettier.”

It makes Victor laugh, which was probably Yuuri’s intention. Victor’s _is_ prettier, burning reds and golds reminiscent of a trophy case in flames; his free skate costume, white lace cascading down into black to his legs, like the skeleton of an angel burned from its fall, is one of the prettiest Victor’s ever seen. Both are miles above whatever these young skaters are wearing.

It’s when Victor picks first lots for the short program that his nerves seem to fray. He’s competing again and he has a bad knee and doesn’t land quads consistently in practice, and his programs express emotions Victor can barely articulate to himself, let alone a crowd of overzealous strangers. His knee hurts and he wants to win _so badly_ the tips of his fingers ache.

Yuuri puts Victor’s face between his hands right before Victor sweeps out to the center of the ice. Victor had never looked so deeply into someone’s eyes before—it was odd, suddenly being allowed to stare. Yuuri’s eyes held his, pinning his thoughts in place, warming his breath.

“Trust your body like you trusted it before,” Yuuri says, softly, with steel bridging the undertones. “Let the music carry you. If you need to drop a quad, drop it. _Let go_ , Victor.”

Victor has never been one for following orders. He’s always considered Yakov’s commands as tentative suggestions. But hung up in Yuuri’s eyes, he’s already trying to figure out what Yuuri means before he steps away from the rink wall.

But Victor can’t let go. He’s the golden prince of figure skating, and no one has ever suspected how genuinely lonely he is. He’s not elated or joyous and doesn’t feel triumphant, but he also doesn’t let the isolation the program requires shine through. He flubs a quad he knows he’s too tired for and hurts his knee trying to adjust.

He doesn’t realize Yuuri is more annoyed he’s trying to hide his limp after the skate rather than the fact he practically desecrated Yuuri’s perfect routine.

The free skate barely goes better. Victor doesn’t understand how to unguard himself like Yuuri wants, especially in the routine that begins with a pantomime of Victor’s fall at the Grand Prix the year before. It’s a triple flip that immediately falls into a low, sweeping arch that exposes Victor’s neck, and it’s almost harder to perform than the last quad of his program, the quad flip that nearly ended Victor’s career.

The routine is beautiful and terrifying and Victor doesn’t know how to allow his mournful desperation that he truly feels to articulate itself into his skating. The middle of the program represents his journey with Yuuri back to the Grand Prix, with anger and abating loneliness and desperation for gold haunting every movement; it culminates with a quad flip, incredibly late in the program—so late, in fact, Victor’s never landed it.

The routine is sloppy, and full of tiny mistakes and touch-downs. He panics in the last quad flip and lands badly, hitting his face on the ice, eerily reminiscent of his fall at the Grand Prix.

But, unlike the Grand Prix, he gets up. He finishes his program to a stadium of applause, blood falling from the cut in his brow into his eye, around the dip of his cheeks, a mimicry of tears. He refuses to leave another competition on a gurney.

Yuuri hugs him like he’s trying to squeeze Victor’s soul from his body.

“It wasn’t right,” Yuuri says, “But it was good.”

*

Victor qualifies, and he’s assigned to Skate Canada and the Rostelecom Cup, the second and last events. He’s competed in both in the past but it feels different, now. He’s no longer the assured victor. Christophe won the Grand Prix last year, and everyone is assuming he’s going to hold onto his gold, or that the up-and-comer JJ Leroy will snatch it up with his talent and uninjured body.

Victor is a footnote to their odds.

Privately, Victor seethes. He’s worked his entire life, worked until his own body crumpled unto itself, to be the shining figure of legend in the skating world. He’s returned to skating without taking a season to fully recover like his doctor advised because he can’t allow another disgrace to his name. He lied, bald-faced, that he’s no longer in pain; he hides his limp even from Yuuri. He trains too hard and for too long.

Outwardly, Victor smiles, just like he always has.

*

Before they leave for Skate Canada, Yuuri says, “You’re too private, Victor.”

“Too private?” Victor gasps, willfully misreading Yuuri’s intentions. “And here I thought I was so forward, Yuuri!”

“You have this mask,” Yuuri continues—he’s indomitable today, unyielding to Victor’s purposeful misdirection, “of this perpetually calm and untouchable man. Its smile is too big, but nobody ever notices. You could hold this blinding smile in every other one of your routines because it fit. But these routines aren’t about reinforcing that mask. My routines are meant to show the audience behind the mask—the chipping away, the loneliness in seeking a familiar crown. You’ve shown me pieces in practice, but you can’t put it together. You’re too invested in your ego.”

Victor’s heart chips, breaking a little under Yuuri’s unrelenting observations. Yuuri sweeps his thumb over Victor’s cheekbone, like he full well knows the implications of what he just said.

“It’s not a bad thing,” Yuuri says, leaning into Victor’s space, an opposite parallel of many of their interactions. “Your mask. But it must be so lonely under there, never letting anyone in. All I want is for you not to be lonely anymore, Victor.”

*

“My theme for this season is loneliness.”

*

Skate Canada begins in a way Victor is unused to: he still hasn’t perfected his short program, so he flubs the final quad again because his knee buckles, and he’s placed in fourth.

He avoided a lower rank because he’s getting better at lifting his mask, like Yuuri asked. It’s not dissimilar to trying to remove his skin, but he tries. For Yuuri. For the sake of Yuuri’s programs. He wants the audience to gape at his vulnerability, the kind of performance he’s never once created in his entire career. Usually, Victor wants to surprise the audience—this year, he needs to astonish them.

Yuuri’s choreography is nothing _short_ of astonishing.

“The free skate is where it counts,” Yuuri tells him that night, helping Victor through the strength and flexibility knee exercises they’ve both memorized. “Once this clicks for you, you’ll blow everyone away.”

“But what if it doesn’t click?” Victor asks before he even realizes he is uncertain.

Yuuri glances up at him. In the light of their hotel, his eyes oddly sharpen behind his glasses, before softening kindly. His lips pull up and Victor’s breath leaves him for better places.

“It will,” Yuuri says, with the kind of confidence Victor, in all his glory, has never known.

*

It makes sense before the free skate. Not completely, but something changes in the way Victor skates. It’s suddenly, inexplicably, not about the audience; it’s about them—Victor and Yuuri. Victor has always skated with an audience; the audience of his fans, the judges, the other competitors. He’s never skated for one person, never an audience of one.

Now, at Skate Canada, in front of an adoring crowd, he skates for Yuuri. _Just._ Yuuri.

He screws up the quad flip again, but it’s because he’s so fatigued he was convinced it was going to kill him. He hopes Yuuri will forgive him. His knee throbs from the unforgiving routine and he’s forced to bracket his hand on his thigh to stay upright.

In the end, he takes home silver—second to a young Thai skater that’s only just shy of a decade his junior—but the way the medal makes Yuuri’s face light up is enough to make him proud.

Their first kiss also happens to erase any lingering resentment over the silver.

*

Yuuri is concerned in the weeks leading up to the Rostelecom Cup, but doesn’t tell Victor any of his thoughts at first. He does cut practice short more often than Victor would like, and insists Victor relax in the onsen longer than usual, but Yuuri never voices what he’s obviously afraid of.

He doesn’t need words, but Victor wasn’t always great at reading the meaning behind actions.

Finally, Victor asks.

“You’re not emoting enough,” Yuuri finally admits. “You can’t put on a persona for this routine. You’re not telling someone else’s story. This is you—who _you_ are, Victor. You were good at Skate Canada, but. It just wasn’t completely you. I don’t know how to help you, either.”

Victor looks away, can’t handle the honesty and worry in Yuuri’s eyes. “I don’t...I am trying, Yuuri.”

“I know you are,” Yuuri replies, reaching over to sweep Victor’s hair out of his eyes. Victor briefly meets his gaze, held there by the vulnerability of staring into someone’s eyes. “You can’t pretend you’re still the king of the ice anymore, is all I’m saying. You’re someone else now.”

Victor whispers, “I don’t know who I am if I’m not the champion.”

Yuuri puts their foreheads together, closeness chasing away the rising fear in Victor’s chest. “That’s okay,” he says. His eyes are closed but Victor looks at his eyelashes, at the curves of his eyes and cheeks, falling. “You never had to know. You aren’t alone anymore. I’ll help you, I’m here. You’ll find out who you are.”

*

Japan doesn’t know much about Katsuki Yuuri. Victor finds this lack of recognition appalling. He wants very much to display Yuuri’s skills as a choreographer to the entirety of Japan and the world. A gold medal for two heart-wrenching programs Victor didn’t create would be a perfect way, in Victor’s mind, to direct international attention towards the object of Victor’s growing affection.

The victory he knows in lonely. But with Yuuri, victory isn’t something he dreads.

He skates at the Rostelecom Cup with joy he hasn’t felt in years, shining the triumph of his past throughout the first half of his skate; the second, he desperately allows the loneliness he’s suffocated in to show, leaking into his begging fingers, outstretched and desperate. There, someone reaches back, and the excitement of triumph once more returns, but this time, in tandem with the abating loneliness.

Victor briefly regains his place in rank 1 at the Rostelecom Cup. He’s never been so proud of a flawless short program in his life.

Before the crowd has even dissipated, he gets a phone call.

*

Yuuri frets with Victor’s scarf as he says, “Don’t let Yakov drag you back to the way you practiced before. You’re not trying to regain your image, you’re remaking it. Okay?”

“Okay,” Victor says.

He tugs the ends, loops them together and tucks the knot into Victor’s coat, fidgeting for touch. “You’re going to be fine. If your knee starts hurting before the second half, drop the quad flip like we talked about. You can’t hurt yourself before the Grand Prix. You’ll qualify without it.”

“Right,” Victor says.

“I’m only a phone call away,” Yuuri finishes, looking up into Victor’s eyes. If he could see Victor retreating into the familiar mask, isolation licking at his heels, he doesn’t say anything.

“I know,” Victor says.

 Yuuri steps up close to Victor and goes up on his tip-toes to hug him tight. Victor responds in kind, and it’s a very close thing that he almost doesn’t let go. But he does let go, and Yuuri turns away to return to Japan.

 _Don’t go,_ Victor doesn’t say.

*

He smiles that stupid, Victor Nikiforov smile when he’s interviewed before his free skate. He can feel himself do it, pulling the corners of his mouth too wide, tugging the skin of his lips so taut he nearly bleeds.

That’s when he knows his free skate isn’t going to be perfect.

Yakov tries to clear his headspace at the public practice, but Victor shuts him out. He shuts everyone out, even Christophe—his only real friend, probably—so he can hear himself think.

Yuuri needs him to lower his guard, bare his throat, remove the Victor Nikiforov mask. The thing is, the mask is so glued to his identity he still doesn’t know what’s beneath it.

His skating is more melancholy than ever, aching and bittersweet even when exaltation and joy is at its peak in the music. He doesn’t take out the quad flip and regrets it, because he falls hard trying to land and barely gets up in time to keep up with the final combination spin.

Victor’s knee gives out after he holds his final pose and he can’t get up on his own.

He’s never been so mortified. He refuses the gurney and, for the first time in his life, doesn’t shine a single smile at the Kiss and Cry or any of the following interviews. He grips his thigh in a death-grip and refuses a knee brace the whole night through.

The podium is full by the time his scores are calculated. He squeaks into the final by what he considers a technicality and seethes at himself the whole flight home. Victor Nikiforov is better than the sixth spot in the Grand Prix, Victor Nikiforov is better, better, _better_.

*

Yuuri is waiting for him at the airport. All at once, those arrogant thoughts that consumed him dissipate as they embrace, clinging to each other as though they’d been separated for years.

All other thoughts dissipate, too, when Yuuri leans up to kiss the bitterness away.

“I want to stay with you forever,” Victor realizes, in the space between them. They’re in public but nobody else exists. He isn’t himself when Yuuri’s not around, and now that he’s starting to see who he is, he doesn’t ever want to go back to Victor Nikiforov.

Yuuri’s smile is simultaneously dazzling and soft; it mirrored what Yuuri always was, overflowing with talent and heart, soft and anxious and unyielding.

“It almost sounds like you’re proposing,” Yuuri says. There are tears in his eyes, and Victor realizes they're sympathetic tears, drawn from the ones blurring Victor’s vision of Yuuri’s beautiful face. Yuuri ducks his head into Victor’s shoulder and hugs him tighter. “Forever, then.”

Yuuri knows. Yuuri can see Victor, beneath everything he was; Victor has never been so himself since that warm night when he was five and a half years old.

“Forever,” Victor repeats, and thought wonderingly, in awe, _this is what it’s like?_

*

Yuuri wants to sightsee, so Victor takes him to the arts districts in Barcelona. They explore the markets and shops, gawking at churches and theatres and ancient stones; Victor lavishes Yuuri in gifts, wrapping him up in scarves and jackets and buying him more fashionable ties and shoes.

Yuuri laughs and blushes, tries to refuse, but smiles contentedly when Victor happily continues.

Victor doesn’t even think Yuuri may respond in kind, so he’s surprised when he’s brought to a jewelry shop, left to wander as Yuuri sets up a payment plan for a piece Victor hasn’t caught sight of. Yuuri, as they leave the store, is beaming.

Victor can’t look away, drawn into Yuuri’s orbit, happily giving himself to the pull of his gravity; he draws his arm around Yuuri, feels his heart swell as Yuuri does the same. He’s never wanted something more than his crown before.

*

The two of them stand in front of a church, a choir singing nearby, the wind blushing the tips of their ears and noses. Yuuri puts a ring—a _ring!—_ on his finger and Victor feels something loosen, something deeply knotted around his heart _finally_ give when he slides the other ring onto Yuuri’s hand in turn.

Yuuri smiles at him, and Victor smiles back. He smiles for real, with no blinding or dazzling involved; he smiles for Yuuri, for himself, to express this light that’s growing in his chest, bubbling out of him and into his extremities. Victor holds Yuuri and marvels at the glint of his ring, a familiar shine of gold that does the opposite of his many gold medals.

He’s not alone.

“We’ll get married after the final,” Yuuri tells the other skaters at dinner, later that night. He’s beaming and blushing when the whole restaurant applauds them after Phichit and Chris, the shits, pointed out their matching rings.

Victor beams, and he says something stupid, but it makes the whole table—Otabek, Yuri, Chris, Phichit, Mari, Minako—laugh.

 _So this is what it’s like?_ Victor thinks, this time with less awe and more relief.

*

Yuri Plisetsky is very talented, but unmotivated.

“You promised me a senior debut program,” the kid grouses, glaring at Victor from beneath a dark hood and a veil of blonde hair. “Then you went and got hurt.”

Victor tries to recall making that promise, but he can’t. He looks at Yuri, a familiar face in the Russian rinks, Yakov’s new prodigy; he must have been aching to perform against Victor, but finds no pleasure in trying to beat a cripple. Apathy is as good as death in skating, and Victor knows from experience. If only Yuri had a real rival. Or…Victor brightens and says, “I know someone who will choreograph you a program for next season! It’ll be better than anything I could ever make, believe me.”

*

Victor enters the short program with fever-pitch conviction and desperation.

He finishes the program with a shrieking knee and ice on his fingers.

Yuuri rushes out onto the ice when Victor collapses, crying out in shame and grief. This program, _Yuuri,_ deserved better than a touch-down and a mediocre expression of emotion. He twisted his knee in one of the quads and he’d lost his sense of triumph and loneliness in the rush of pain.

Victor holds in his tears, but can’t hide his limp. He finally lets Yuuri put on his brace at the Kiss and Cry, grimacing into Yuuri’s shoulder.

*

Victor has something of a breakdown the night after the short program.

He can’t explain why it happened then, but something hurts inside of him as he thinks about the failed program; he steps out of the shower, inexplicably starts crying, and can’t stop.

Yuuri is frenzied, like Victor was when Yuuri started crying after he landed his first quad. He breaks in the door and settles Victor out so his knee won’t cramp, brushes his hair away from his clenched eyes, rubs warm hands up and down Victor’s goose-flesh arms; he runs for a blanket from their bed to wrap around his shivering body, drapes a towel over his dripping hair. Victor sobs in a way he hasn’t since he was a kid, a lonely child desperate for affection.

He found affection everywhere when he became a prodigy; but it was distant affection, like that for the stars. He wasn’t real to anyone and so the love wasn’t either.

Eventually, Yuuri has nothing else to rush around their room for, having already ordered sugary pastries and comforting hot drinks and frantically wrapped another blanket around Victor as though he was in danger of freezing; he settles into Victor’s body and space, a steady shoulder for Victor’s tears, a familiar body to cling to.

Yuuri ultimately manages to get Victor to his feet and into the bed. His hair has long since dried and the drinks are cold, but Victor drinks a half cup anyway to assuage Yuuri.

His fiancé—his _fiancé—_ settles into bed beside him, and Victor falls asleep, warm.

*

Yuuri brushes Victor’s hair away from his eyes before Victor begins the final free skate of his career.

“I’ve never kissed a medal before,” Yuuri says, contemplatively. He’s wearing the black jacket that Victor bought for him, and the navy accents attractively compliment his skin just like Victor knew they would. He glances at Victor, into his eyes, and smiles with a hint of mischief and an overwhelming tide of love. “Won’t you bring a medal back for me?”

Victor’s eyes widen stupidly and then he’s grinning like a weepy fool. Yuuri is crying, too, holding onto Victor’s costume. When they part, Yuuri wipes Victor’s eyes and says, “Let the music inside, and it’ll make sure you won’t fall.”

And then—

it clicks.

Victor understands. His knee hurts but it’s a mirage behind the cascade of his soul; he lands the first triple flip with ease, falling to a sweeping coil that bares the tragedy of his injury. He rises from the hurt and seeks triumph again, but with an obvious partner at his side. His step sequences are one part of a duet, strength and glory and love echoing; he loses himself to the rising music, baring everything he truly is.

The last quad flip, the signature jump of Victor Nikiforov, the jump that almost killed him, approaches; Victor is exhausted, but can barely feel it. Love and gratitude sing in him as he takes off, and the wild crowd can’t deafen his own elation and triumph when he lands.

He catches a glimpse of his glittering ring as the program finishes, chest heaving and tears in his eyes. He shouts to the ceiling, arms outstretched, tears falling, everything inside of him boiling and overflowing and laid bare for the entire world to see.

_This is who I am._

*

Yuuri kisses him at the Kiss and Cry, and Victor laughs through his lingering tears. He puts his own brace on before the interviews, and watches the other finalists perform rink side. All are in top form, even JJ after his disastrous short program; Victor cheers them all on, hand never leaving Yuuri’s.

Yuuri catches his eye after the final skater, Chris, leaves the ice; he pulls Victor’s hand to his lips and kisses his ring with joy and pride and so much more in his eyes.

*

Victor is proud of his place on the podium, second to Otabek Altin. He grins his stupid-fool-in-love smile, holding out the silver as though it was his engagement ring.

Later, Yuuri kisses the medal, and says warmly, “I think silver is your color, Victor.”

Victor takes Yuuri’s hand and kisses his golden ring. “I don’t mind gold, though,” he says, physically unable to hide his smile. As though he would hide anything of himself from Yuuri ever again.

*

Victor has an apartment in St. Petersburg. Yuuri, when he moves in, cleans the entire place and rearranges the furniture, as though the rooms were a record of who Victor was before the past competitive season. Victor helps, but takes more breaks than necessary to complain about his knee and kiss Yuuri senseless.

The little Yuri takes Victor up on his offer for Yuuri to choreograph for him, and badgers Victor hard and long enough to convince him to coach Yuri, too. Not as though Victor wasn’t already contemplating it, but he wanted to make Yuri really work for it.

“I don’t know, Yuri,” Victor sighs melodramatically. “I mean, you didn’t even medal in the Grand Prix. Are you sure this is even what you want?”

The following explosive defense of Yuri’s motivation and talents is one for the record books, and Victor grins stupidly the whole way through. Yuuri burns the pirozhkis he was trying to cook before Yuri came over—he found out it was Yuri’s favorite food—but the three eat them anyway.

Yuuri kisses Victor when they’re washing the dishes, and Victor had never been more grateful that his life, inexplicably through tragedy and heartache, had somehow lead him here. He gazes into Yuuri’s eyes, eyes he fell in love with, and knows Yuuri is looking back.

**Author's Note:**

> Saudade - a deep emotional state of nostalgic or profound melancholic longing for an absent something or someone that one loves.
> 
> I didn't include a banquet scene moment because I didn't want to twist anything around to have them meet through happenstance, since Yuuri isn't a skater.
> 
> I know less than nothing about dancing, skating, and music. If I used a term wrong or something's inaccurate, please let me know!!
> 
> Victor's free skate costume is inspired by one of Yuzuru Hanyu's, for his program "Romeo and Juliet." Someone help me link??
> 
> This work is unbeta'd. Please point out any mistakes so I can fix them! 
> 
> Come talk to me on tumblr! I post shit and AUs occasionally: [[x]](http://advisedpanic.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Thank you for reading!


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